Cry the Tears As They Come, Life is Beautiful

When Mom picked me up at the airport last night she did not look good. Yes, it’s true that she’s ten years into a leukemia diagnosis and that she’s had a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted for about seven now. It’s also true that she doesn’t take care of herself and never really has. Since I have now pretty much accepted that I will never be able to detach from her emotionally in anything like a healthy way, I must just accept that fact and learn to live with it. If things aren’t okay with Mamma, things aren’t okay with me. It’s a paradigm set up around 1965 when my dad couldn’t provide for her what she needed from him and I took on that responsibility for him. It’s all okay. It’s no fun at all. But it’s okay. I’ve learned somehow to live with it. I’ve tried every possible tactic to implore her to take care of herself but its exactly as effective as when all those people pleaded with me to stop drinking for all those years and I just simply could not. The fear was too great and so I can (of course) empathize with my mom and I don’t hate her for it. She is just afraid. It’s just an incredibly unhappy place for me to be in and I know that she is not happy either. She misses my father. This will be the first Christmas without him since they met. I would think it odd that she misses him so since I never had a conversation with either of them in forty-eight years when the other parent was mentioned when it wasn’t about how awful they were— she about him, he about her— I would think it odd except that I also miss Adam very, very much. I’ve seen people’s eyes when they talk about their parents if their parents were in love and had a good marriage. I think it instills in the child an essential sense of wellbeing. I have always felt like I was the product of contempt. I was an unplanned pregnancy in a marriage where the couple were at each other’s throats for fifty years. I rose out of flames. But I’ve learned to own it. I believe that we chose our paths to include our parents and when and where we are born. I believe we do this in confederacy with Divine Mind and I am living the life I chose. It ain’t an easy one a lot of the time. But it is mine.

I pray for my mother’s happiness. I pray that she will start taking care of herself. I pray that, now that my father is not around, she’ll get out and do the things that she always said he was keeping her from. I pray these prayers for her. I pray them for me. But that’s all I can do. All the cajoling in the world is to no avail.

Here is one of the scariest pieces to the whole deal: I have always, from the beginning, looked to Mom to see how to live. It’s not that I didn’t pick up some skills elsewhere but a whole lot of how I process things, how I approach life, how I shop, how I get what I want, comes from her. Now we are both without husbands. She lost hers to death. I lost mine to addiction. In fact, I had (unwittingly) chosen a husband who would treat me like my father treated my mom. I didn’t fully realize this until I saw my dad and Adam together. It was chilling— like two peas in a pod. Now that dad is dead, and even though I know intellectually that I should move on and now live my life the way that I have always dreamed of, a part of me is still looking to Mommy to see how I’m supposed to be. How am I supposed to live now that the husband is gone? Now this is the point where the usual suspects will start drafting their emails, Facebook messages, etc. telling me that I shouldn’t do that. They’re ig’nernt and they can’t help it. I forgive them. They don’t realize what’s really going on here. But you and I do. God is in charge and there is a kind of “divine soul surgery” being performed without my having to control or direct it one whit.

You see, the whole point of all these struggles, all this conflict, all this pain, is to help me learn. It’s to help me learn how to surrender even in the midst of great fear. It’s to help me learn how to surrender to the creative life force inside of me that comes from me and through me and of which I am actually made. This is about surrendering to God. I pray a formal prayer of surrender each morning and although some of you may see my life as a colossal mess, I see it as unfolding in a perfectly harmonious way just exactly according to God’s plan for me. So much of the art that I’ve created of which I am so very proud came out of periods of great struggle, out of my “working it out,” or more appropriately my “letting God work it out through me.” God’s got this. (Or for some of you, to contextualize it in a way that is more comforting based on your abhorrence of the term “God” which comes from the injury you have sustained from organized religion: The Universe, Divine Mind, or even “the process” itself.) I am in a place of Divine Surrender and it is terrifying, exhilarating, and ecstatic.

I have all these goals, right. That’s a good thing. And now (especially since The Little Saint started force-feeding me capital T Truths via text messages everyday) I am more assured than ever that they will come to fruition. But tonight after I dropped Spud off at his house, I pulled over to check my Facebook messages. A couple were from Marines. I love to hear from my Marines. One of them was from Frank Correa, with whom I’ve only reconnected in the past few days. Before last week, the last time I saw him was when I was being med-evac’d out of Iraq to have my abs sewn up.

With his permission, I’m going to share with you what his message said:

Jeff,

I just got done watching the 8 videos on YouTube of your play. First of all, let me start by saying that you are a very talented and gifted individual. As I watched, the only word that came to my head was beautiful. It was beautiful. I am feel very honored about the fact that you made me a part of it. By the way, thanks for not giving me the stereotypical. “Mexican” accent as some others would since I am not from there. It really touched me. It was very emotional to watch on some parts and I think you pretty much conveyed the thoughts and feelings of a lot of us. Though some will deny it. I will say that I am a Bush fan so don’t hold that against me. I feel blessed to be have reconnected with you. Thank you for the honor from the bottom of my heart.

Not a bad impression either.

Your friend and brother,

Me

When I read that message, something peculiar happened inside my ribcage. I literally felt the pressure against the inside as my heart filled up with the sensation of Love. I thought, actually, of the struggles I’ve been through, especially over the past two years; I thought of what I hope to accomplish in the next couple. But mostly I was so very conscious in that moment of what is really important to me in this life— and it was exemplified by my brother taking the time to reach out and share his feelings regarding something I had created based on our common experience. I REMEMBERED WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO ME!

I love to create. It was what I was put here to do. My unique experience (to include all the shit sandwiches I’ve had to choke down) make me uniquely qualified to tell certain stories as only I can. That is when I am in my bliss. That is when I am in heaven.

Tears rolled down my face as I read the message from my brother who went to war with me. I’ve cried a lot of tears over the last couple of years as I have had a lot to grieve. I’m okay with that. On the night that my marriage ended I prayed, “Dear God, let me cry the tears as they come! I don’t want to have to go back and grieve this shit years down the road.” And God has answered “yes” to that prayer. Tonight’s tears were of a different kind and I’m not ashamed to say that I like this kind much better. But I’m willing to cry them all, willing to cry them all as they come. Life is beautiful.